Happy days spent at Ray's

Reunion recalls magic of Sioux Falls drive-in

Jan. 28, 2013

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Lyle Hanson (left) and Eleanor Austin reminisce Sunday about Ray's Drive Inn during a reunion at Sioux Valley Energy in Brandon. They worked together in the kitchen. The Sioux Falls hangout was popular in the '50s and '60s. / Jay Pickthorn / Argus Leader

An old photo of Ray Starks and menu from Ray's Drive Inn.

BRANDON — It had carhops, it had fry cooks, it had music playing from old 45 rpm records.

All Sunday afternoon’s reunion of Ray’s Drive Inn lacked was the late Ray Starks’ “golden crust chicken,” prepared with his secret recipe.

“It was crunchy, and it smelled oh so good,” said Carol Boyd Yarrow, who was a carhop at Ray’s from 1962 to 1965. “He practiced for a long time with the recipe before he put that out.”

Ray’s Drive Inn stood at 12th Street and Garfield Avenue for about 15 years, opening in 1951.

Ken Starks said his father chose a country-western theme for his drive-in, then just east of B&G Milky Way. In fact, Ray Starks operated the Milky Way drive-in for a time, too.

“They were twin buildings, side by side,” Ken Starks said. “The drive-in on the east side with the hamburgers and malts and carhops and all that, the walk-up place next to it.”

Ken Starks estimated that Ray’s Drive Inn probably employed at least 600 people during the time it was open. Yarrow and a fellow carhop, Jill Herried Gronewold, tracked down as many as they could after they decided late last year to host a reunion.

“I expected maybe 20 people, and at the end we had 73 with probably five or six coming today who weren’t on the list,” she said.

For many of those present, Ray Starks was their first boss. He made it a good experience, his former employees agreed.

“One time, the Beatles were going to be on TV, on Ed Sullivan, and Carol’s working and she wanted so bad to go watch the Beatles on television,” Gronewold said. “So Ray or Kenny let her go home for an hour — she lived a block from Ray’s — and she watched the Beatles and she came back to work.”

Eleanor Austin worked at Ray’s the entire time it was open, then followed Ray Starks to a truck stop on North Cliff Avenue. She served as the morning cook, working from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. She could see the customers come through the door.

“A lot of the customers, when I saw them coming in, I could put their order on and serve it,” said Austin, who celebrates her 86th birthday today.

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Sometimes one of her co-workers, such as a high school student, needed a little training.

“He had poured a mug of root beer, and on his way to the customer some other customer asked him for some gum,” Austin said. “The gum was down on a shelf under the register. He set the root beer on the floor, got this guy his package of gum, picked up the root beer and went and served it.”

Ray Starks taught Yarrow how to count change.

“He was always in a tailored cowboy suit top to bottom,” she said.

“He said, ‘Carol, we’re going to learn to make change today,’ so we went in the room, and he said, ‘We won’t leave until you know.’ So we made change and did it over and over. He was so gentle and so nice.”

Yarrow, who says she made a good butterscotch malt, recalls that the drive-in, which started with about 10 stools at the counter and three tables for four each, would take counter checks and cash paychecks.

One day, a young man with closely cropped hair came in and asked to cash his paycheck from a local steakhouse. In the 1960s, after long hair for males came into fashion, a local judge often would include an order for a haircut in the sentence he handed down.

The lack of hair, signaling the possibility of trouble with the law, and his need to cash a paycheck made Yarrow uneasy, and she asked Ray Starks to approve it.

“Then I found out he’d just got out of boot camp,” Yarrow said. “We’ve been married 48 years.”

Gronewold recalls the uniform she and the other carhops wore after Ray Starks had perfected his golden crust chicken: navy blue slacks, a navy blue zippered sweatshirt with patches promoting the chicken and a narrow navy blue hat.

The carhops would put a sign in a car’s front window indicating the customer had been helped. Since their only income was tips, they put a plea for generosity on the cards, plainly visible to the customer.

“I don’t even know if Ray knew it,” Gronewold said. “On a Saturday night, we’d work until 1, 2 o’clock in the morning, and we’d go home with $20 bucks. When we got done working, we had to go pick up garbage and trash on the lot, when you’re dead tired. We’d go walking home at 1 or 2 o’clock in the morning and not think anything of it.”

Ray Starks spent his life in the restaurant business, working in Pierre and the Black Hills after he left Sioux Falls. His son, now of Harrisburg, ran a Pierre restaurant for about 30 years.